What others say: Student loans

Posted: May 23, 2012 - 12:24am

Orlando Sentinel

The following editorial appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday:

Student loan debts can dog graduates for decades.

Just ask U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, the 40-year-old Florida Republican and vice presidential possibility, still paying off loans he took out to get through college and law school in the 1990s. A third of all student loans are held by people age 40 and over, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In Florida, a growing number of graduates are drowning in debt. Yet state lawmakers seem determined to submerge even more, leaving them at the mercy of a job-starved economy and increasingly aggressive federal debt collectors.

College students in Florida who graduated in 2010 with debt had taken on an average load of more than $21,000, a total that swelled by more than a third over the preceding decade.

Florida’s average is less than the national burden of about $25,000, but the default rate on loans in the state is worse; 10.5 percent of borrowers in Florida whose student loans came due in 2009 had defaulted by 2011, compared with 8.8 percent nationally.

The state’s unemployment rate, still higher than the national average, has left fewer opportunities for recent graduates to find work that will pay them enough to keep up with their loans and allow them to launch independent, productive lives by buying their own homes and cars. ...

Florida leaders in both parties love pontificating about the need to get the state’s economy moving, but most seem oblivious to the drag of a growing underclass weighed down by debt. ...

Lawmakers even passed a bill to remove the 15 percent tuition cap for the University of Florida and Florida State University, and eventually for other state universities. Gov. Rick Scott, to his credit, vetoed the bill.

Scott and higher-education leaders have formed a series of task forces to chart a course for reform. Those panels need to attack the problem of growing student debt head on instead of whistling past the graveyard.

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Let's put the blame squarely where it belongs - on the institutions of higher learning! Every time the government eases the college loan requirements, the colleges raise their tuition charges. They pay their professors and other staff unrealistically high wages and spend countless funds on unnecessary perks and surroundings for both faculty and students. Furthermore, too many unqualified people are pushed into attending college, even if it is clear that they are not college material. We need more trade/vocational schools in order to insure a satisfactory supply of skilled craftsmen. Do we really need (or want) contractors, plumbers, electicians, etc. with college degrees?

BoSox makes some valid points. The discussion should also include the rapidly expanding quasi or often (non) accredited "private college" industry, some of which are little more than scam institutions. These institutions account for the lion's share of defaulted student loans. The ones using high pressure "push" time share sales tactics should be called to account for false advertising about their "college" success rates.

We do need more and better trade/vocational schools. At the same time, some people seem to stigmatize trade/vocational education even though the foundations of our economy and society are literally built upon them. It makes one wonder if that may pressure some young people to seek a college education when it's not what they are suited for or even really desire. Maybe it's time that schools who produce high quality electricians and contractors get a little more prestige attched to their names.

I tend to agree with your statements, however Corporate America has run the Tradesmen out of business. You cant start a clothing factory in America with out the big companies importing clothes from India shutting you down as a sweatshop, same goes for shoes, stores are full of plastic foot rot , raw materials once grown from farms are replaced by synthetic materials made from petroleum. Everything thats built, is built with built in self destruct , including our homes which are now made from glued sawdust that melts like sugar once wet. Everything is designed to self destruct at the last payment of the financial instrument. We dont have Free market or competition , we have a handfull of mega corps forcing the peasants to buy from the company store.